Congested Highways
Here’s the curious case of the 121/2499/I-635 interchange. The connectors are clogged. Some 126,000 vehicles a day move through State Highway 121 north of I-635 (2017 statistics). That number is estimated to nearly double—to 244,000—by the year 2025.
The Texas Department of Transportation began work on widening those highways in 2010, and (partially) finished in 2014, mostly because there wasn’t enough money in the budget.
The Texas Transportation Commission found more money. From the Texas DOT website:
To its credit, much of this work was completed ahead of schedule. The DFW connector is so heavily traveled and so essential to the flow of people and transportation that there’s a website dedicated to it. (You can read about the project timeline—past and present—HERE.)
As we detailed last week, the irony is that highway expansion “sets off a chain reaction of societal decisions that ultimately lead the highway to become congested again.”
The 121/2499/I-635 interchange in Texas is just one example of the dozens of challenges states face throughout the nation.
Sometimes construction equals stagnation, as we see with too many empty luxury high-rise residences in some major American cities. And sometimes construction equals growth, as our carriers experience around Dallas and throughout major highway interchanges across the country as they deliver freight.
Unlike blockbuster movies, whose lines begin to diminish after a few weeks, relieving the bottlenecks of our highways invites more traffic.